Delhi Dome of Faith

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Delhi Dome of Faith provides a niche and diminishing return landmark function. Especially when compared Tower of Victory assuming standard optimal delhi play style.

Why is it niche?
DOF is niche because scholars are niche. You only need so many scholars early and given delhi play style requires obtaining and defending sacred sites, the gold saving of DOF become a non-factor later on when the game gets going. Next the added research speed obtained are minute early on and a detriment to your ability to product units and/or build your blacksmith(s).

For example Making 3 DOF scholars at feudal age up ( having 4 total) vs making 1 scholar in transition to feudal (having 2 total) will result in the DOF route saving you 7 seconds in standard econ upgrades but costing you an additional 110g ? 110 resources is almost the cost of a blacksmith and is absolutely NOT paid for in having upgrades 7-10s earlier.

The only examples proven by high levels of evenly matched play where DOF landmark contends with the benefits of Tower of Victory, is when you’re allowed to engage in small skirmishes and the high health pool of the scholar can help soak incoming damage; or when high activity high high raiding takes a toll and the raiders can return to satellite healing centers. However in the mid to long run; the TOV pulls out clearly as THE better landmark option.

These are ideas to correct the Dome of Faith deficiencies:

Introduce the imam area of effect healing ability thru a special 350g upgrade ONLY in the Dome of Faith!! In combat healing is rare among the factions but in my opinion the concept well suits the Delhi as THE faction centered around scholarship and elephant** (kekw). The Imam like aoe healing is extremely functional and it scales with army size; so there is no diminishing returns and it will actually scale the more premium units you have, since premium units useually have high HP and/or armor.

2nd idea is boring…but it would result in the momentum builder originally desired by the devs. The idea is once the DOF landmark completes it should instantly spawn 3-4 scholars (4-5 total if it’s the first mosque built). Then it should do so again once you hit castle (3-4 more scholars spawn at the DOF). And finally do so again in Imperial age.

This is a less eventful buff… but functional and practical given the playstyle alternative it can offer. Say you want to 2TC play (it’s not optimal but given certian matchups like versus China its viable) having 4-5 total scholars essentially for free will offer you 60-80% research speeds on all your upgrades. Alternatively going TOV and making 1 scholar in transition? Before going into the 2nd TC play would cost you 130g (significant delay on 2ND TC) and garner you only 27% increase in research speeds. That’s a comparative 33-53% faster research time and 130 reso##### to spend elsewhere (faster 2nd TC and or BSM). To put it in seconds thats 24 to 36 seconds FASTER standard economic upgrades!!! 24 to 36s is MEANINGFUL. Secondly, the immediate value of 3-4 free scholars (4 to 5 total) also provides a defensive posture against early aggression since that many scholars can sustain against small raids.

However even these savings have diminishing returns in the long run where feudal upgrades have long been researched. This is why i believe this landmark needs to keep on giving thru every age up. Providing the additional 3 or so scholars each age up will legitimize the FREE RESEARCH advantage of Delhi. Currently the technologies are NOT practically free beyond feudal because they would take too long with 0-1 scholar research speed bonus. While sacred site gold goes hand-and-hand with scholar product, this is the case because delhi has no alternative use for direct gold use until castle age.

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Season 5 ( Patch Note 7.1.113 ) Civilization-Specific Changes (Delhi ) → Developer Note: We wanted to give the Dome of Faith more tempo with faster train time on Scholars. Additional it generates increased resources per minute while constant training. This is balanced by the fact that the building generally has more idle time than other production buildings as it’s creating a more specialized unit. But it has not been done yet

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By definition it does do exactly what they said. Before DOF savings resulted in 65g per 45s and now DOF savings provides 50g per 30s. Also In a vacuum if you compare a standard civ like English or HRE that researches all their feudal upgrades (eco and bsm) and you compare what they do to what delhi could do researching the same upgrades with the benefits of a few scholars; the and total time saved would add up significantly compared to delhi trying the same feat via the Tower of Victory full scholar prices.

Problem is NOOO BODY PLAYS THIS WAY BECAUSE !!! AND IT DOESN’T WORK IN HIGH COMPETITION !! And they know this and that’s why they said its a specialty unit that isnt contantly produced.

if you DOF spend 320 to 400 EARLY gold on scholars and 150 wood on a BSM and the TOV guy takes 300W on 2 BSM and 130 gold on a scholar in transition to feudal (470-550 res compared to 420 res). The DOF guys gets 10 ish seconds faster eco upgrades but the effective bsm research favors the TOV guy bc he made 2 working at 27% bonus speed EACH and the DOF guy can only afford 1 BSM working at 80-100%. If you only need to expedite 1 or 2 BSM upgrades? Then DOF is the way to go, but all BSM upgrades are functional.

There was a potential match point game for 3rd place between Marinelord Malian vs 3D!Bee Delhi last weekend…

Bee has pioneered many many BO’s in this game, to include the less popular DOF build. However the success Bee has had with the DOF BO IMO has been accredit to his superior gameplay abilities, because when he faced equally competition (ML and Vortix), he lost both times in the exact same matchup in almost the exact same way!!!

You get that intial tempo builder the devs speak of however the minute lead isnt significant enough to sustain once the tempo builder no longer builds. While Alternatively the TOV build of the spanish bros almost matches the initial tempo of the DOF build BUT ALSO the TOV Build absolutely sustains thru HIGH INFANTRY DPS for the remainder of the game!!

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Having said all that though? Upon reviewing the bee vs marinelord game, delhi vs mali, bee could have STILL had favorable tempo had he stuck more to raiding instead of taking those 2 horrible horrible last engagements. Secondly bee could have gone the trio composition route like the spanish bros like to do and that WOULD have help favor him in the forced engagement because ML had no archers and spearman soak damage better cost effectively vs donsos and javelin throwers. So even with a third less ghazi raiders displaced by spearman, he would garner a suitable meatshield for the ghazi and archer to pick the donso apart then overwhelmed the remaining javelin throwers.

Regardless… TOV would have easily done a better job in the long run.

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Dome of Faith was by far the most build Delhi landmark in the latest pro tourney. The tower of victory was only built a handful of times vs Malians or in the mirror pretty much.

Tower of victory builds also generally take a lot longer to get blacksmith and university upgrades (and village fortresses) since it is harder to have nearly as many prelates.

Tower of Victory is the go to if you are archer heavy, Dome of faith for cav. Tbh Delhi feudal landmarks are probably the most balanced for having options on which to choose

Dome of faith is usually better against cav + archer comp since you will rely more on Ghazi raiders, and the map will generally be more chaotic (so you need more monks to replace the ones that get sniped).

Against infantry, your monks are less likely to be sniped (and sacred sites contested in general), and you will need a lot of archers to deal with enemy spears, so tower of victory is great for the combat buff.

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We may have watched 2 different tournaments? At least for the delhi matched broadcasted on twitch.tv? Those were overwhelming TOV builds an even the few that were DOF seldom had scholars actively engaged in combat? Only bee really used his scholars in combat. Also the 1 time Lucifron went DOF vs Demu Mali, he lost, then went back to pure TOV builds.

Beasty doesnt believe in DOF so he never used it. And vortix used DOF at least 1 of the 2 types he played Delhi but again vortix didnt use his scholars in the game i saw vs valdemeria china on lipany.

Also i dont recall seeing but 1 game go Imperial vs Delhi? Even so the saving provided by DOF that late? Are not substantial as what you need late is SPEEED of research not merely cost effectiveness. So you would have 3 or 4+ mosque making scholars as oppose to single queing 15+ scholars all thru the DOF?

Attach is the MU of the tournament

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Just gonna go off of the playoffs (I feel like I saw more DoF in the groups, but I don’t want to go through all that).

Bee vs Vortix - DoF vs Mali
Loue vs Lucifron - DoF vs Ottomans (crazy long imp game)
Lucifron vs MarineLorD - ToV vs Mali
Lucifron vs Beast - ToV both in Mirror
Bee vs ML - DoF vs Mali

So in playoffs it was about equal, and it was more player preference it seemed. Loue + Bee were DoF, Beasy + Lucifron were ToV, ML/Vortix/Mista/Demu didn’t play Delhi.

DoF generally gets WAY more scholars out since you are spamming them for cheap all feudal age. ToV generally doesn’t get enough gold to make a 15-20 scholars. Plus if you really want more scholars, the dome of faith build still has a regular mosque as well (generally DoF build ends up with 20+ scholars by the time you are aging to castle and they kind of sit around all game, while ToV needs to spend a ton of time/gold in mid-game if they want to match that)

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What you said is factual in terms of quantity of scholars with the DOF vs TOV. Absolutely

But notice each of the DOF plays in the playoffs resulted in loses for Delhi.

In part, IMO is due to the lack of meaningful function the crazy number of scholars provides!!

Take the lou game vs lucifron on canal (delhi vs otto); lou had an imp push where he pulled all 21 scholars into combat with HC tower elephants spearman and siege AND he won the first few engagements…but then his scholar mass subsequently evaporated and there would be zero opportunities for him to re mass 21 scholars, NOR would 21 newly produce scholars have provided a smidgen of the benefits he could have had thru a TOV landmark for his spears and HC!!!

Lou lost that game bc his gold dried up and his premium units were inferior to Otto premium units especially with no TOV buffs. IMO

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I did notice the amusing winless tower of victory. With such a small sample size, it’s hard to tell if that’s landmark difference or player difference. All of the Delhi victories were by the person that won the series (except Bee vs Vortix).
In the Ottoman game, there was a lot more things going on than just the landmark. loue was super close to winning a couple times, failing to get on the trade (which he could have a number of times and was Lucifron’s basically whole eco), going elephants against mass janissary (probably the best anti-elephant unit). A number of failed siege micros.

There’s also the fact that he forgot to get his siege workshop techs (siegeworks and the mango tech…) before fighting with all his scholars (after techs are done, scholars just aren’t worth producing due to nerfed combat healing).

I do admit ToV would have been good for the handcannons, but at the same time imp techs probably would have been slower (or his imp delayed/less handcannons due to gold cost of more scholars) so it’s a tradeoff. Pro players don’t plan on games going super late imp as Delhi.

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Another DOME OF FAITH idea

Ppl like the illusions. So make it so you get 30% research speed buff per scholar housed in the DOF specifically. Basically having 5 scholars housed all in the DOF will grant the equivalent research speed buff as having ~11* scholars in standard mosques.

  • Because the DOF ONLY has 5 slots that caps the maximum bonus the landmark can offer in this regard.
  • Since you would start with 0-1 scholars the benefits would not grow exponentially too quickly.
  • You would retain the cheaper scholar perk to marry with the foremention idea.
  • AND it could provide a legit alternative opener to dark age mosque (I’ll elaborate).

Mosques costs 100w and takes 25s to build. If you’re doing standard delhi then you’re chopping at least 50 wood from staggler tree. The time spent building the mosque and collecting the wood amounts to 125s #### # # wood gathering villagers + 25s of building mosque). If you were to re-purpose that time into sheep gathering per say; that would instead have garnered 82-88 ish food (assuming the 0.66/s nominal gathering rate or the under the TC sheep gather rate near 0.71/s gathering rate).

This nom dark age mosques would delay wheelbarrow by 15 ish s. Trading 15s on WB for 20s sooner age up; followed by multiplicative rates of 30%¿¿ Might be sufficient momentum

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Another idea not extremely innovative…

But make it so building the DOF offers 50 gold off DOF scholar production AND also grants ALL scholars IN COMBAT the ability to heal for 80% of out of combat healing! As oppose to the mere 50% out of combat healing effects.

Just so the coding isn’t crazy; just make it so herbal medicine is instant researched. HECK, to further build on the Landmark playstyle; give DOF the Compound of the Defender treatment!

instant research Herbal Medicine and bring Swiftness (the scholar movement speed) accessible in feudal. And bring Zeal into Castle.

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I meant to say this is a nerf dressed up as a buff. Yes it it correct that 50g saved per 30s is more saved than 65g saved per 45s; but they hedge their own statements by admitting that the scholar is a specialized unit and that the Dome of Faith stays idle more than any other production building…

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I wanted to expound on the concept of bringing mosque techs from later age up to be available sooner thru the DOME of FAITH.

Zeal
This Imperial tech grants units healed by a scholar a 3 second buff of 50% increased attack speed. My impression of this skill is it was designed to synergize with focus healing on elephantos. Sadly this tech has spent its greater part BUGGED (typical delhi) and even today it doesn’t speed up every type of attack an elephant can dish out. Secondly it’s applied individually so the impact on a large fight is minimal to negligible.

I’m suggesting Zeal be updated to be a burst AOE regen that last 15s with a 90s global cooldown. Once researched it can be activated by any 1 scholar and the effect will emanate from said scholar in a 10 tile radius. The regen will be worth a base 8 HPS and it can be buffed by herbal medicine to a max of 13* HPS.

The counter play to this mechanic is the effect is only active for the full 15s if the scholar that initiated the effect remains alive for the 15s. If that specific scholar is sniped then the effect will also die.

Also for ease of use the zeal activation button will always be visible in the UI as long as any number of scholars is currently selected. So if you have a group of 4 scholars 10 ghazi and 20 archers all selected, even if you have NOT tabbed to the scholar UI the scholar zeal button will remain readily accessible.

Next Zeal will become a 4min feudal technology ONLY if you age with DOME of Faith. Otherwise the technology will remain an Imperial 12 min technology.

I understand this change will not in itself address all the glaring issues of the DOME of Faith by comparison to the TOV given standard delhi playstyle? But it will give the community a slight different focus if this landmark is chosen.

So make the new DOME of Faith provide 80g scholars across the board (created from any mosque); and make zeal accessible in feudal with all the details mentioned above. Lastly bring Swiftness down to feudal with it regular research times.

90s global cooldown means the effect will be ready for use at least once every major engagement. And 8 HPS will essentially sustain your frontline for those 15s. This effect almost like the woloo will encourage enemy range to move in to snipe the regen healer WHICH will remain mobile!!! That should prompt delhi to take that enemy range maneuver into account and flank the enemy while retreating the activated healer. Effectively the mether play of Ottomans.

Because the effect is not permanently active it becomes critical when it is best to activate it and if you have several scholars on the field anyone of them can initiated the effect; that will favor having multiple scholars in the army giving the enemy a tall task to clear out all your scholars in a preemptive measure to negate your potential zeal effect. Also the global cooldown timer WILL FREAKING NOT BE VISIBLE TO THE DAMN ENEMY PLEASE…

Overall we need ideas that bring back the scholars into active combat in an intuitive and fun way. Having a BUTTON adds RTS; having a counter measure adds RTS. Not sharing the cooldown timer with the enemy adds RTS.

Edit
Given its a 4min technology you’ll have to make decisions (RTS).
Do i research zeal first an delay my sanctity Or zeal 2nd?
Do i que up both zeal and sanctity and delay my scholar production?
Do i build yet another mosque (dome plus 2 mosques) in order to keep my scholar production and double que sancity and zeal and soon after swiftness and piety etc?

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Next idea:

Actually a revision of ideas previously mentioned.

Make DOF upon build completion spawn 2 scholars instantly (3 if dof is the first mosque) ; then AUTO generates 1 scholar every 80s. The auto generates can be toggled. The DOF remains a mosque that can no longer train scholars the standard way, but can still research mosque technologies and simultaneously auto generate free scholars and house relics and scholars. Last perk will be all standard train scholars will now only cost 100 gold.

This change would not do enough for early game tempo; but with having 2 free initial scholars and an auto scholar generation would mean a very very strong castle and later game progression. It would be similar (but not as strong) concept to malian cow boom; which takes some time to get going but once it’s going? It’s GONE.

Example if you achieve a delhi castle timing of 15min game time(kinda late esp with a DOF feudal play); the total number of free scholars youd have at 15min is 11 SCHOLARS. Yes surviving without TOV that long will be a challenge but 11 scholars for free would result massive massive research value. Given you only need 6 housed scholars and 1 in each production type building in order to get standard veteran upgrades (10 total).

Secondly; free scholars also means sacred site gold can more readily be used for marketing more units and or age ups!!

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Zeal should stil be changed. Current iteration is less than niche in its functionality.

And a Zeal change as suggested would still play a wonderful impact late game, especially along side free scholar production.

More on the free scholar production. Bc scholars have been gutted merely having FREE scholars is not in itself OVERPOWERING. scholars heal (medicore in combat heals), speed up research, capture sacred sites and move relics in castle+. Devs have admitted these functions are specialized and do NOT merit a constant production of scholars. But if those scholars come along for free?? Those niche functions become worth of a constant FREE scholar production.

If relic wants to get cute? They can give this new DOME of Faith the Hisar ACADEMY treatment whereby the auto generates from a base of 80s down to 50s.

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Your proposal for the 30% research speed buff per scholar housed in the DOF sounds intriguing. It could create an interesting alternative strategy, especially when compared to the standard mosque opening in the Dark Age. The idea of balancing the benefits with the limited slots in the DOF makes sense, preventing an overly rapid exponential growth in bonuses.
The shift in resource allocation from building mosques to gathering resources like sheep during the Dark Age is a thoughtful consideration. It emphasizes the potential benefits of the proposed change and its impact on early-game strategies. This adjustment might indeed provide a different momentum and strategic advantage, trading off time for various advancements and tech upgrades.
Ayat Kursi holds significant importance as a protective and revered verse in Islamic tradition. It’s a powerful prayer recited for spiritual and protective purposes. Incorporating such elements into discussions about strategy and gameplay reflects the diverse and rich cultural influences found in various aspects of life, including gaming and strategy.

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I just got back to playing delhi and the byz Hiatus was refreshing for the purposes of new content and different playstyle.

And now that im back, I have divorced myself from the ideas of rushing sacred sites. Instead i dark age rush with a few spears vs all boomers except English and transition feudal with Dome of faith and play either 2TC if the opponent goes 2 TC or semi fast castle.

DOF is very slow BUT if I can get to castle safely having 6+ scholars on the field is a big advantage to securing relics. Also 9+ scholars means I’m getting vet upgrades in 1min and castle eco/BSM upgrades in 2.5mins or less.

Lastly i love my elephants so being able to create sufficient scholars to house into several stables means i can spam war elephants lancers and ghazi raiders with a buttload of archers and spears to support .

Oh i almost forgot having relics with a blob of scholars to spam conversion is quite strategic.

DOF isn’t completely useless.

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I’ve reverted…

DOF is completely useless under said conditions:
If you can afford 100w to build an additional mosque and you can sustain ONE sacred site… you will render the DOF “advantages” meaningless.

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All things delhi!!

Yesterday i maff’ed out some DOF macros and as usual execution doesnt always follow the theoretical. ALTHOUGH it was neat to see the number somewhat come to life… i lost all my games.

However i remain motivated because i think i still see a semi FC viable build in there somewhere.

My Premise
My idea is to find a way to leverage these 3 scholar functions- research speed, relics, healing!

Scholars have 5 unique functions:

  • Efficient Production
  • Sacred Site capture
  • Research Speed
  • Healing
  • Relics

And only 2 of those practical matter early in feudal; efficient production and sacred sites.

My issues are:
Relics are hard to get unless you can age up super fast, be sneaky or have map control.
Healing in combat out in the open is impractical bc scholars are so slow walking, will all die on retreat and swiftness take 6 years to research.
Lastly, early techs more or less research so quickly that you do NOT gain a significant benefit by spending an exorbitant amount of gold on additional scholars.

so what if we could devise a defensive where we make 6+ sholars, towers and a handful of defense units to fight off the rush, then age where 6+ scholars could start to pay off in research speed, in base defense will mesh with slow scholar being able to stay stationary and heal, then with lack of enemy presence on the map and/or behind my tech advantage units scoop up all the relics?

Obstacles so far:
Build is not optimized; build requires scouting to best select what age 3 units to make, the build is slower than a FC, build only leverages slightly one aspect of the delhi bonuses and purposefully forgo TOV (HUGE). I’m also forcing Elephants bc i love them. Most other civs FC much much better .

Nevertheless tonight is round 2.

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Will give a lengthy post tomorrow , I need to play around with these new numbers :slight_smile:

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